Funny thing about small businesses. Not only are they responsible for creating lots and lots of jobs, but they're also responsible for the loss of lots and lots of jobs.

That insight comes courtesy of Inc. Magazine's Bo Burlingham, in the intriguing article "Who Really Creates the Jobs?" Burlingham's investigation should be required reading for every pundit who wants to wax eloquent about the government role in spurring small business job creation, because it makes a convincing case that both Republicans and Democrats are going about things all wrong -- at least at the federal level.

"If you were to group together the vast majority of small companies," writes Burlingham, "their net job generation would add up to zero."

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Twitter gasped. Up to that point, Schieffer had thrown one softball after another, but here was the high hard one down the middle. For many liberals, President Obama's aggressive deployment of drones to kill suspected terrorists in northwestern Pakistan is a stain on the current administration that cannot be washed away, a profound betrayal of civilized values. A campaign of murder from the skies in a country that is supposedly our ally -- how is this remotely conscionable?

But liberals are also accustomed to Obama getting a free pass on the topic from the mainstream media and political elite. So just hearing the word "drones" spoken was shocking -- here it was, finally, a chance to address this ongoing national shame before an audience of millions and millions of Americans.

And then came Romney's response, which basically boiled down to drones are awesome!

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First the common ground: Both Obama and Romney agree that the car companies needed to make deep cuts, shed costs, write down debts and fundamentally restructure themselves in the way that can be achieved only through bankruptcy. When Mitt Romney wrote his infamous November 2008 New York Times Op-Ed “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” this is what he meant -- he did not mean let the companies go belly up, as Obama falsely suggested last night. And indeed, that’s what happened. Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 in April 2009, and GM followed in June.

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The campaigning group Stop NDAA originally proposed the tweet jacking protest via their site, noting "both parties are colluding in denying you your First and Fifth amendment rights under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, and both candidates refuse to discuss this bipartisan assault on civil liberties."

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But it shouldn't be. The latest reason why comes from Europe, in the form of a 274-page report on the cost and frequency of extreme weather events in North America, courtesy of the giant resinsurance company Munich Re. The short version: Across the entire globe, North America is experiencing the most marked increase in both the number of extreme events and their price tag.

Reinsurance companies serve as the backstop to the insurance companies that sell protection to individuals and businesses. As such, they stand to lose big from proliferating weather-related catastrophes, a fact that prompts them to ignore ideological positions on global warming and focus relentlessly on the data. For years, companies like Munich Re have been warning that man-made climate change is going to cost humanity a lot of money. Floods, droughts and really bad thunderstorms? They're going to get worse. They already are.

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From the New York Times:

Mr. Gupta’s lawyers argue that a lengthy prison term is unnecessary because Mr. Gupta has already paid a terrible price. They said that his reputation is in tatters given the intense media attention surrounding his trial. “This is the quintessential case of a monumental fall that is, in and of itself, severe punishment,” said the defense.

Most people convicted of crimes find their reputation in tatters. But only a few have access to lawyers bold enough to argue that this distressing change in status should constitute a get-out-of-jail-free card. Chalk it up as just one more piece of evidence proving that the wealthiest Americans simply don't believe the rules apply to them.

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First, here’s how Romney told the story last night:

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, how come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men? They said, well, these are the people that have the qualifications. And I said, well, gosh, can’t we -- can’t we find some -- some women that are also qualified? And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of women.

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By and large, environmentalists already know who they are going to vote for (hint: it's not the guy crisscrossing the country attacking the EPA), but they can be excused for spending the energy portion of the debate looking for a coal slurry pond to drown themselves in. On energy policy, the debate demonstrated only one thing clearly: The U.S. is headed in the wrong direction.

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The remark came in response to a question about what each man onstage would do for women, and Romney’s answer was essentially that he’s hired lots of women over his lifetime and has responded to their needs by providing things like a flex schedule so they could pick kids up at school. “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of -- of women,” Romney said.

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It was a little bit of an odd pitch for a guy whose entire premise is "vote for me because I'll create more jobs," but whatever. By the end of the debate, Romney was off his game and rattled. He appeared flabbergasted at what had just happened.

As well he should have been. On the economy, Romney stuck to exactly the same script that had worked so well in the first debate -- he repeatedly emphasized his favorite unemployment talking point: "23 million Americans are out of work." At every opportunity he stressed how "the middle class" had been "hammered" and "crushed." He noted how this year's economic growth rate was slower than last year's. He delivered some of his most effective lines of the night in response to a question from an African-American man who had initially asked President Obama why he should be excited about the prospect of a second term. Romney said the questioner shouldn't be excited at all, because, "if you elect Obama you know what you are going to get ... The president has tried but his polices haven’t worked."

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"A123’s bankruptcy is yet another failure for the President’s disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work,” said Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney.

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It was just last summer that the possibility that yet another series of presidential debates would go by without a female moderator for any of them was looking mighty real. Things were so bleak a group of Montclair High School students had taken to petitioning the Commission on Presidential Debates to bring in the first female moderator in two decades. When teenagers are asking on the Internet for something that should at this point be a no-brainer, we are living in grim times. So it came as refreshing news in August when CNN's Candy Crowley was named as moderator for this Tuesday's event.

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Instead, over two weeks four men argued about tax policy. The moderators have not, thus far, introduced a single slightly unconventional issue, and they have ignored several very conventional ones.

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Later this week, Biden will share the stage with Paul Ryan for the vice-presidential debate. It’s still unclear what (if any) polling damage the Democratic ticket sustained from Obama’s listless performance, but at the very least it’s fair to say that Democrats are more apprehensive than they were before Denver. Romney last week mixed broad-stroke rhetoric and confident, if factually flawed, assertions to paint himself as an utterly reasonable, swing voter-friendly moderate – exactly the sort of widely acceptable vehicle for economically anxious swing voters his campaign is predicated on appealing to.

Obama’s refusal – or inability, or strategic reluctance, or whatever it was -- to pounce on any of the many openings Romney gave him during the debate flummoxed Democrats (in some cases, comically), and left them wondering what will happen if the president doesn’t step up his game in the next two showdowns.

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Here's Kevin Baker, at Harper's:

Instead, Obama signaled that he wants out. His diehard supporters are already trying to wave away this weirdly awful, unengaged performance as just his latest turn of Zen mastery, but that dog won’t hunt. They should steel themselves for more shocking displays of indifference over the next month on the part of this strangely diffident individual. It’s quite possible that he means what he says, and he really can’t wait to become an ex-president.

Here's Garance Franke-Ruta at the Atlantic:

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Before the debate was even over, the sputtery, passive performance by PBS's stalwart star Jim Lehrer as debate moderator was already being panned as the worst thing to happen to television this year that didn't involve a Kardashian. And more significantly, the network's 43-year-old altitudinous icon, Big Bird, got a surprise dis when the man who would be president declared, "I'm sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep spending money on things, borrowing money from China to pay for it."

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I have no issue with the weird format. "Anything goes, just shout at each other until you run out of things to say" is fine with me, I don't care that much about strictly enforced time limits when people are trying to make points, I'm fine with candidates directly addressing each other.

And the people who hated Lehrer don't "blame" him for Obama's slightly sleepy and decidedly non-knife-twisting performance.

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Heading into last night, the president enjoyed a lead of 3.1 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average. The margin was roughly consistent with where the race has been since Romney secured the Republican nomination in the spring, but it did reflect a slight tightening over the past week. But the immediate verdict from voters who watched the debate was clear, with 67 percent saying Romney fared better in a CNN flash poll, compared to just 25 percent for Obama. In CBS’s poll of undecided voters, Romney was the victor by a 46-22 percent spread.

Over the next few days, Romney stands to reap some significant benefits from what happened in Denver:

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